


Colours

by FrankenBean



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 11:36:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18548971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrankenBean/pseuds/FrankenBean
Summary: I grew up in South Africa and then moved to England. I wrote this piece based on my observations from both countries about how binary and narrow people's views of race and ethnicity is.





	Colours

~~~~~  
It is my first day of school, I am drawing a picture of my family: Mom and dad and Neil and Stephanie our maid and Rex our dog and me.  
I ask the girl next to me if I can use the skin colour crayon.  
In the year 1999 many companies are still owned by white people, including the crayon producers.  
The girl next to me hands me a peach wax crayon.  
“No,” I say, “Not that one. I meant the darker one.”  
She hands me orange.  
“Never mind,” I say handing it back to her, “I’ll get one from the box.”

On returning, the girl looks at me strangely.  
She calls me stupid.  
I say that I’m not stupid.  
She says I am because I said I wanted the skin colour crayon and I went and fetched a brown one.  
I say that I have got the dark skin colour. The girl laughs at me and calls on the teacher.

The girl holds up the pink/peach/orange colours and asks the teacher if she could read the colour label. “skin-colour” the teacher responds. The girl snatches up my crayon and asks for its label to be read. “brown” she says. The teacher smiles and walks away.

The girl says that I am stupid. She holds her crayon to my face. “See?” she says, “Skin colour.”  
I hold the “brown” up to Fozzia’s face. Her dark honey skin is like Stephanie’s and the crayon looks similar. Stephanie is darker than Fozzia so I press the crayon into the paper hard to get the right colour.

“See?” I say, holding up my page proudly, sure that now she will see. “Skin colour.”  
The girl shakes her head. “You are stupid.” She says.

She says that Fozzia is “Black” and that that means Stephanie is “Black”. She says that I am “White”, that she is “White”  
I hold up the crayon that I used to draw the clouds. I have never seen anything that colour that was alive. I have only seen clouds and ice that colour and paint and other dead things.  
I hold up the crayon I used for outlines, the lines that separate the bricks of the house in my picture. I have seen only charcoal and ash this colour. Not even the dead of night is this dark.  
I shake my head. “I am not White. Stephanie is not Black.

I do not like wax crayons, you can’t mix the colours. I have tried starting with white or pink or orange and then adding brown to try and make the picture have skin like mine but the colours won’t mix. I like art. We get to use paints that mix and pastels that mix. But the teacher doesn’t like us mixing the paints, he says it makes a mess, he says that when we mix the colours we ruin them for the next people who want them.

It is my first day at school.  
The other kids don’t like me. They say I’m stupid. They say I’m weird. The only person who talks to me is Fozzia. She’s my friend. We trade lunches while we sit on the swings. She is my best friend. Her skin is darker than mine, but it doesn’t matter to me because she is my friend.

~~~

It is my first day of school in England, I'm now 15.  
They ask me where I am from.  
“Africa.” I say.  
“But you aren’t black.” They say.  
“No.” I say, “But I’m from Africa.”  
“But where are you from originally?”  
“Africa.”  
“But where are your parents from?”  
“Africa.”  
“But they are not black. What about your grandparents? Where are they from?”  
“… Africa.”  
“Oh,” They say, “so you are one of those people who kept slaves.”  
“No.”  
“Yes. They all keep slaves. They all contributed to apartheid. White South Africans hate Black people, that's why you left because Black people are now free and running the country.”  
“No. My grandfather was a mechanic. My other grandfather was a musician. They could barely afford to feed themselves. South Africa never participated in the slave trade.”  
“Yes, but they still kept slaves. They had slaves to clean their houses and slaves to do the gardening and slaves to man the petrol tanks.”  
“No. My parents had a maid who was like a second mother to me. My parents would pay her as much money as they could afford and she would help with the dishes and the laundry and babysat my brother and me because my parents worked full time. When my parents could no longer afford to hire our maid we found wealthier friends to hire her so that she would still have a job, just not with us. The attendants at the petrol station are provided with jobs in a country where unemployment is high. They wash the hot, red African dirt off the windscreen for tips and make sure no one leaves without paying or steals the tins of oil. They check the tires and tell the driver if they are getting flat and then re-pump them with air.”

It is my first day of school in England and the questions kept coming.  
“If you're from Africa, how come you can speak English?”  
“Is it true that you live in mud huts over there?”  
“Did you ever have a pet tiger?”  
“Is it true that you hate black people?”

~~~

It is my first time in England.  
At the border agency in the airport, they ask me to fill in a form.  
Tick the box for ethnicity. Black African, Black American, Black Other. White American, White Australian, White European White other. Asian.  
Most application forms are exactly the same.  
Some say: African, mixed race and Caucasian. But none ever apply to me. 

White other. I tick the box and specify “White South African.”

The black ink on the application forms on the stark white paper screams at us that we must fit into a box. Tick what you are!  
I do not fit inside your printed boxes. I am me, and that is all I can be.


End file.
